McCAFFERY: Phillies' portfolio loaded with tradeable assets

NEW YORK -- They have baseball's best record, haven't lost consecutive games in more than a month and haven't finished a season anywhere but first place since 2006.

And the Phillies have everything it will take in the next two weeks to get better.

Such was the revelation in a weekend series in Citi Field.

Such was the message Sunday when they smothered the Mets, 8-5, not with former MVPs, not with Cy Young candidates, not with All-Stars, but with hidden-value depth that could allow them to manipulate the trade market at the on-rushing deadline.

From Friday night when John Mayberry collected a career-high five RBIs and Vance Worley improved to 5-1 through Sunday when Kyle Kendrick walked just three in seven innings and Michael Martinez provided four RBIs, the Phillies presented a virtual bazaar of available, alluring and reasonably priced trinkets.

In a baseball season so competitive that even the Pittsburgh Pirates may wander to the trade deadline with champagne fantasies, the Phillies are showing enough talent in reserve to provide every possible roster-massage option. That would include everything from stalking the best players available (Hunter Pence?) to the settling for a mild tune-up.

"We'll be tinkering around the edges," assistant general manager Scott Proefrock said, "if we do anything."

They have won two championships in their existence and will never be better positioned to win a third. They cannot tinker, not now, not this time. They need hitting. Even after the eight-run outburst in Citi Field, Charlie Manuel was all but howling for some ... and with Proefrock in the very room, listening from a nearby couch.

"If look up there and see our batting averages and you see .240, .240, .240, .230, .220 and things like that, we better have somebody coming (off the bench and helping) on different days," Manuel said. "So that's what it is going to take. When you are hitting low like that, that's definitely not consistent.

"So if we have anybody who wants to hit .300, they can. I'm definitely not stopping them."

It's not going to happen, not after 94 games with the highest-paid regulars all over 30. Yet suddenly, the Phils have enough understudies playing respectably at just the right time to trick some possible trading partner into a panic buy.

Begin with Kendrick, who improved Sunday to 5-4, trimming his ERA to 3.34. He has as much chance to catch for the Phillies in the postseason as he does to pitch. But he is a healthy 26-year-old who for about the $1 million he is due might make a difference in a wild-card race. Joe Blanton's elbow is not healing as the Phillies had hoped, but injections have eased the pain in Roy Oswalt's back. And that makes Kendrick a No. 5, 6 or 7 starter ... but a potential No. 3 or 4 someplace else.

"If I can pitch like that every time," Kendrick said after allowing one run Sunday, "I'll take it."

At the minimum, his decency could stop Ruben Amaro from punching the ignore button should a call ring through for Worley, as close as any young Phillie to untouchable.

The Phils could keep Worley and improve at the deadline. Domonic Brown doesn't have the value he had two summers ago when he should have been traded for Roy Halladay. But he is not yet a spent prospect. Mayberry is proving a special defensive center fielder with some ability to hit. Martinez would be available only with Rule 5 complications, but his switch-hitting and defensive versatility make him interesting.

Antonio Bastardo is the closer, at least until Ryan Madson labors back into shape. But in Kendrick, Worley, Bastardo, Madson, Brown and Mayberry, along with whatever prospects they are warming in the bush leagues, the Phillies can do more than fiddle with a roster one world championship from being considered a dynasty.

If they took nothing else from it, then, their weekend in New York had value.